Sermon

August 10, 2008
Pentecost 13
Romans 11:13-15, 28-32
Pastor Joel Zank

God’s Amazing Mercy

(Romans 11:13-15, 28-32)  I am talking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I make much of my ministry {14} in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them. {15} For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? {28} As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies on your account; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, {29} for God's gifts and his call are irrevocable. {30} Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, {31} so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God's mercy to you. {32} For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.

In Christ Jesus, who shows us nothing but compassion and mercy, dear fellow redeemed,

“Amazing mercy – how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!” Wait a minute. That doesn’t sound quite right, does it. We sing of God’s “Amazing Grace,” and with good reason of course! But as we listen to the Apostle Paul today, perhaps we’ll be inspired to write a new hymn, one that praises God’s Amazing Mercy for, as Paul points out, God’s mercy 1) stops at nothing; and God’s mercy 2) excludes no one.

Now don’t misunderstand. I’m not suggesting there should be some kind of competition going on between God’s mercy and his grace. Not at all. In fact we should rather see them as two sides of the same coin. One does not exist without the other. Grace is the love that God shows to us sinners, love we don’t deserve. Mercy is also God’s love, love that holds back from us sinners the punishment we do deserve. This makes mercy is the only avenue of hope for hell-bound sinners. As people who were born such sinners, we will want to know all we can about God’s mercy.

For example, we will want to know how it is that God’s mercy found its way to us who were not born part of God’s chosen people. Remember, out of all the nations, God, in his mercy, chose the people of Old Testament Israel to be his family on earth, the people through whom God’s own Son would be born a human being. Consequently, all the promises about the Savior from sin were delivered to the Jewish descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. To many, then, it may have seemed as if God’s merciful plan was to save only the Jews from their sins. That, of course was never the case. As we heard in our Old Testament lesson from Isaiah, God himself had designated the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem to be a “...house of prayer for all nations” (Isaiah 56:7). God had always planned to show mercy to the Gentile nations, but that mercy would flow through and spread from God’s chosen people. So much depended, then, on God’s covenant relationship with Israel.

Or so it seemed. But look what happened when God’s mercy met a brick wall. Mercy seemed to be stopped dead in its tracks when the majority of God’s chosen people rejected the Messiah God sent to them, going so far as to nail God’s Son to a cross with the help and blessing of Roman Gentiles.  Who would have, who could have blamed God if at that moment in time he would have said, “Enough already! I’m done being merciful. It’s time to go our separate ways – I to heaven and you sinners off to hell forever!”

But God’s mercy neither said nor did any such thing. Instead that mercy gave us Gentiles are very own apostle, the Apostle Paul who reports to us in verse 15, “...their rejection is the reconciliation of the world...”  Can you imagine that! God’s amazing mercy stops at nothing! Mercy took the people’s rejection of Jesus and turned it into reconciliation between God and all sinners. How? In rejecting Jesus, his own people sent him to the very altar where God dealt with sin once and for all.  At the altar of the cross, God charged all sin and all rejection, not to the people who put Jesus there, but to the one who was crucified on that altar – Jesus himself. So you see, there was hell to pay, but not by those who deserved it; It was all paid in their stead by God’s own Son.

This was the good news that men like Peter and Paul preached to their fellow Jews. Some heard and believed, but most did not.  After a time, this sad truth prompted Paul to tell his countrymen, “We had to speak the word of God to you first. Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles” (Acts 13:46). Once again God’s mercy refused to be stopped, as Paul explains to his Gentile readers here in our text: “As far as the gospel is concerned, [the Jews] are enemies on your account,” that is “for your benefit” (Romans 11:28). Jewish rejection of the gospel brought the message of God’s mercy to the Gentiles.

There are some happy but sobering truths here for all of us to consider. First of all the gospel has come to you and me for this reason and this reason alone – God has had mercy on us. Understand what that means: the gospel is not ours by chance. Nor is it ours because we have earned or deserved it. If that were the case, then Paul would not be talking to us about mercy. He’d be discussing wages and rewards. But he’s not. Mercy is what God shows to sinners who deserve only his wrath and punishment. We are such sinners both by birth and by the way we live our lives. We tend to forget that, so Paul reminds us: “Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience” (Romans 11:30).  Here we find a second happy but sobering truth: We are the beneficiaries of God’s mercy just as the people of Israel were. God’s mercy sought us out, found us and is blessing us so richly. But there’s the lesson for us to learn from those who’ve gone before us: God’s amazing mercy will not be mocked. Since we have not earned or deserved this mercy, it will not remain ours should we take it for granted. If we refuse to acknowledge our sin and our great need for God’s mercy or if we decide to treat his mercy as a license to sin as much as we want, then God’s mercy will certainly move on from us to someone else. You see that, don’t you? How arrogant we would have to be to think ourselves so near and dear to God that he would not possibly deal with us as severely as he dealt with the chosen of Israel who disobeyed him long ago.

But what if we have been that arrogant? What if we are guilty of misusing and abusing God’s mercy? What if we fear that by our actions and attitudes we may have already sent God’s mercy packing? Put your fears aside – not because you haven’t sinned. You have and so have I. Put your fears aside because God’s mercy is still with you. In fact it is his mercy that has brought you to see your sin. That’s what Paul means in verse 32 of our text where he writes: “For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.” It is God himself who teaches us how much we need his mercy. How does he do this? He chases after us with the demands and threats of his commandments until finally he has us backed into the blind alley of our disobedience, the spiritual dead end from which there is no escape. With his law that accuses and convicts us of every sinful action, word and thought, God means to rob us of every hope we have to save ourselves until finally there is no false hope left, nothing left but this plea: “God have mercy on me, a sinner. Lord, do not treat me as my sins deserve.”

And with that, the same mercy that brings us to confess the sin that is ours and the damnation we deserve, turns right around and takes all our fear away because it takes all our sin along with its awful curse and puts it all on Jesus, our Substitute – whose amazing mercy did not even let the horrors of hell stop him from paying and canceling the debt of our sins and not only ours, but the sin-debt of the whole world. All the sins of every person you know and will ever meet along with the all the sins of everybody else have all been paid for in full by Jesus. Do you see what that means? God’s amazing mercy excludes no one!

God has had mercy on all people, and yet only those who know and believe this truth will benefit from his mercy. So more than anything else, God wants us to spread the Word. But not to everyone? Right? It would be a waste of breath to tell some folks about God’s mercy. They’ll never listen; they’ll never believe; Besides, so many have already rejected that mercy; it’s too late for them. Isn’t it?

Friends, as long as a person has life and breath, it’s never too late. Look at what Paul says in the opening verses of our text: “I make much of my ministry (meaning, I work hard at it. Why?) in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people [the Jews] to envy and save some of them” (Romans 11:13c-14). Paul, a Jew once known as Saul the “persecutor of Christians” had recently experienced the saving mercy of God in his life. He who once prided himself in being a “Hebrew of Hebrews” was well aware of the fact that if God’s mercy could rescue him, the self-proclaimed “chief of sinners,” then God’s mercy was not anywhere near finished with his countrymen. It couldn’t be, for as Paul assures us right here in our text: “...as far as election is concerned, [the Jews] are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable” (Romans 11:28b-29). God is not like us. His mercy and good will do not fade with time or anger. He has elected, chosen to show love to all people, including the lost of Israel. After all, it was to and through the Jewish patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that God offered the gift of salvation and called on Israel to receive it by faith. That call and the gift it brings do not expire. They go out to generation after generation of Jews and Gentiles until Jesus himself returns.  Oh but how will we get people to heed God’s call and accept his salvation? We won’t; we can’t, but God can and will. He has a plan, the same one that Paul speaks of in the verses before us. God’s plan is to bring so many Gentiles to such peace and joy through faith in Christ, that some from among the Jews will become envious, forsake all lies and turn once again to God’s mercy and its free forgiveness.

Christian, God wants to work this miracle through you. It is to you and me that Paul says: “...so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you” (Romans 11:31).  God has put you and me among the unbelievers of this world, Jews and Gentiles alike. He has shown us mercy, not only to rescue us from our sins, but so that the blessing of peace we enjoy may attract many more to God’s saving love in Christ. So God cannot afford to have us be selfish with his saving gifts and we have no reason to be, not when we review daily what God’s mercy has done for us. The mere remembrance of what a miracle God has worked with us will inspire us to become the channels through which God can repeat his miracle in the lives of our family, friends and neighbors. What an encouraging truth: God’s amazing mercy stops at nothing and excludes no one. Believing this, we need only to live in his mercy and than watch the amazing things mercy will do all around us, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

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